


Light, Breathe

by tradescant (tofty)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-08-13
Updated: 2003-08-13
Packaged: 2017-10-15 09:37:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/159478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tofty/pseuds/tradescant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tonks cancels her plans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Light, Breathe

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Ellen Fremedon as part of a drabble challenge.

_The whole width of my intentions  
he exhales into the air._

 _\--Soul Coughing, "Sleepless"  
_  
:::

It's an extra-long meeting this time, with everyone sitting around the kitchen table. The Weird Sisters are playing tonight in Diagon Alley, and Tonks is already there, she's jumping and sweaty and laughing and being bought shots of firewhiskey by pretty punk boys and girls who're looking to pull. (Although this happens much more often in her head than in Diagon Alley, sadly.) Sometimes she's surprised at herself, really, pretending to be one of the adults, playing Auror well enough that sometimes they even take her seriously despite the hair and the clothes and the clumsiness and the insouciance. But then she can look up at a meeting like this, and Moody will be spouting his usual paranoid conspiracy theories, and Tonks will feel like a rebellious daughter, with a rush of agonized, affectionate embarrassment for his crackpotism and for this whole band of misfits and think, _I am a part of this_ , and it feels _important_ , and she loves him, loves them all, anyway, despite the fact that they're all so serious and sometimes she wants to shake them all straight out of old age.

And tonight they're still serious, all of them, and all she needs to do is get away and be with different people and forget about what happened last month. And be somebody else, yeah, she wants that too. She's already got her transformation planned.

Finally, eleven-fifteen, and she's fidgeting and the others are starting to nod over their notes and aren't stifling their yawns so much, and Dumbledore just stops talking midsentence and sends everyone home. But of course there's the usual post-meeting regroups and rehashings, which also take forever, and Tonks manages to avoid getting sucked into the vortex and sneaks out the door to the back garden to apparate home to change and Change.

There's already someone else there, though, a dark shadow on the steps. A soft click and a tiny flash of flame, like a muggle cigarette lighter, from the tip of his wand. Remus. He must know she's there (she'd been quiet but not that quiet, and the silence out here is, well, _really_ silent), but he doesn't turn, doesn't tense, just sits hunched over, chin on his knees, arm down in front of him, he looks like a little boy drawing on the pavement with his curved spine closed off like that. With outside sound muted behind the wards, she can hear him breathing in cadence with the clicks. Click-inhale. Click-exhale. As though the wand light is controlling him, or as though he's reminding himself with it. Light, breathe.

This has been a long couple of months for everyone. Even the people who didn't know Sirius very well apart from the Order, like, well, her, are affected. Even the people who openly despised him, like Professor Snape. And for the people who knew him better, like Harry or Remus.

They don't say much, but she's seen them wandering around the house sometimes, a bit lost. Sometimes she follows them, she wants to do or say something. Or to touch them, she doesn't know. Sirius's mother screeching about _half-breeds, mutants, freaks_ is supposed to be an insult, but she knows better. She wants to remind them of that, no matter how any of them feel right now, no matter how many times they run that scene through their heads and put themselves in different places, make themselves reach out and hold on to a loose sleeve, a lock of hair, anything to stop the fall. She does it, and she believes that they do nothing else, nothing else.

But she never does say anything because whatever she says comes out sounding like a joke, like something a teenager would say, even Hermione has more poise than she does, even Ginny has more tact. She feels the words pounding in her head like a pre-Pepper-Up hangover, but she doesn't say anything, and after another frozen minute she steps forward and leans her knees against Remus's back. Light, breathe, a deep one this time, and he leans back hard against her, head back, and drops the wand against his ankles and she kisses The Weird Sisters and the green bouffant goodbye and they both are still, staring at the half-moon, midsummer moon, breathing.


End file.
